Army begins training to improve officers’ capacity

Chioma Joseph, Lagos

The Nigerian Army (NA), on Monday kick-started a five- day training workshop to better equip commanding officers with the requisite skills needed to overcome security challenges in their areas of responsibility.

The event which held at the 81 Division Officers’ Mess, 6 Outer Marina, Victoria Island, Lagos, attracted commanding officers from 2 Division, 6 Division, 81 Division and 82 Division.

Declaring the workshop open, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. – Gen.Tukur Buratai said the workshop is aimed at improving the skills of commanding officers, towards evolving a more professional and effecient approach on the performance of their statutory roles in both peace and war time.

According to the COAS, the five days event which has the theme ‘ Enhanced leadership : Prerequisite for the Nigerian Army Transformation to meet Contemporary Challenges’ is the first commanding officers workshop 2019.

Buratai who was represented by the Corp Commander Signals, Major-General Muhammed Muhammed said, “ The workshop is highly necessary in line with our provisions day in day out, to refresh our mind on the security challenges, and find solutions to these challenges.

“ You will agree with me that at the forefront of our security challenges is how to mitigate them. You will understand running in absolute time is so limited but we need a lot of training of this nature to appraise contemporary issues, and how to go about them.

“ Therefore, the theme is apt at this moment. The trace of this theme indicates the importance the NA attaches to leadership.

The workshop is for you to learn from your contemporaries, on how to apply your leadership skills in your various units and deal with issues.

“ It is for you to rob minds on how to deal with security challenges such as kidnapping, smuggling, pipeline vandalism and the others that affect you on a daily basis.”

In his welcome remark earlier, the General Officer Commanding (GOC), 81 Division, Major-General Sanni Yusuf said the training is one of the series designed by the Army Headquaters to enhance and build capacity.

The GOC said, “ This workshop is to enhance your professional responsiveness in the discharge of the constitutional roles in consonance with the COAS vision.

It is to further enhance your operational and administrative competence to effectively tackle dynamic situations and myriad of challenges facing your respective areas of responsible.

“ To this, it is expected that the series of lectures and discussions throughout this workshop would broaden your horizons, particularly those of you involved in Insurgency operations.”

Yususf said the resource persons invited to lecture during the workshop will handle topical issues.

He further encouraged participants to take advantage of the opportunity and gain as much knowledge as possible.

“ It is gratifying to state that with similar training activities your capacity has improved significantly. This workshop would further enable you to consolidate on the achievements and successes of NA,” he stated.

Also present at the workshop were the Oba of Lagos, very senior officers from the Nigeria Navy, the Nigeria Airforce, the Nigeria Police, the Nigerian Immigration Service, the Nigeria Customs and others.